Wharton Esherick
Designer
Called the “Dean of American Craft,” Wharton Esherick bridged the gap between the Arts and Crafts movement and the resurgence of interest in woodwork with the Studio Craft movement that started in the 1960s. He began his career as a painter, but by the 1920s turned to wood, first making frames and woodcuts, and later, furniture. By realizing that furniture does not need decoration and creating minimal organic shapes in hand-carved wood instead, he paved the way for much of modernism. His old studio/residence in Paoli, Pennsylvania is a National Historic Landmark for Architecture and a museum dedicated to his work.
Poster designed and printed by Wharton Esherick for the Hedgerow Theatre Production of Eugene O'Neill's Emperor Jones, 1930. This is the only known surviving copy. The Wharton Esherick Museum retains the original wood block from which it was printed. Playing Brutus Jones in The Emperor Jones was Paul Robeson's most famous role. In this woodcut poster, the Emperor Jones, armed with a revolver, confronts an antagonist. Esherick’s woodcut work, produced almost entirely between 1922 and 1933, occurred in a period of great artistic transition for him, when he sought a medium in which he could evolve his own characteristic style. Formally trained in oil and watercolor painting,Esherick soon abandoned painting as he developed an identifiable style in his woodcuts. His ability to carve very detailed two-dimensional images that were alive and expressed movement made him one of the great woodcut artists of the 20th century.
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